Novato school district layoff plan heads to trustees

Layoff plan to cut $2M gap heads to board of trustees

The Novato Unified School District might lay off the equivalent of 12 workers under a budget slashing plan to be presented to the trustees on Tuesday.

The proposal, the product of a 30-member budget advisory committee, aims to offset a $2 million annual budget deficit. Declining enrollment, a lack of new state funds and rising pension costs were cited as the reason for the ongoing problem of deficit spending — or depleting reserve funds to balance the budget.

“Our board will consider a total of $1.5 million in cuts,” district Superintendent Jim Hogeboom said. “The other $500,000 (to close the deficit) will be saved through declining enrollment and natural teacher attrition.”

Hogeboom said a large portion of the proposed layoffs would be of administrative workers, such as instructional coaches and support staff in the district office.

Other cuts would be made by consolidating several classes to reduce staffing and by closing a middle school community day program.

“Those cuts are painful,” Hogeboom said of the administrative staff layoffs in particular. “We wanted to keep our resources going to schools and students.”

The public board meeting on the budget cuts will be 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Novato Education Center at 1015 Seventh St. The agenda and addition details are available at bit.ly/2oqoOEh.

Hogeboom said the budget advisory committee, composed of school parents, staff, community members and other stakeholders, worked for several months to arrive at what he called a “overall well balanced set of cuts.”

“While cuts are never fun or easy to make, I think doing it now, and getting ahead of it, is very fiscally prudent,” Hogeboom said.

• five layoffs in administrative staff, including two in the district office, two instructional coaches and one support staff member. The layoffs and other administrative cost savings represent $770,000 of the $1.5 million proposed reduction.

• 4.8 full-time equivalent positions reduced through increasing the staffing formula in two high school programs and one elementary school section. Those represent 32 percent, or $480,000, of the proposed cuts.

• 1.9 full-time positions eliminated by closing Nexus, a middle school community day program. Those and other cost savings — such as a $63,000 reduction in GATE, or gifted and talented program in the elementary school — represent $198,000 of the $1.5 million.